Liam Neeson’s movie premiere is AXED as ‘racism’ row deepens
BOSSES ACT DESPITE STAR’S EFFORTS TO ATONE:
THE premiere of Liam Neeson’s latest movie was abruptly called off last night as the actor found himself at the centre of a growing race row.
Organisers of the screening of Cold Pursuit announced the cancellation two hours before it was due to start.
Earlier Neeson had toured TV studios to deny he is racist after he was denounced for revealing how, after a friend was raped decades ago, he walked the streets looking for a black man to kill.
He had told The Independent: ‘I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some [making air quotes with his fingers] “black b ***** d” would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him.’
The Co. Antrim actor, 66, did not apologise for his comments but said he had confessed to a Roman Catholic priest about his ‘medieval’ urges. Amid a global backlash, he said he hoped his honesty about his ‘primal’ feelings will prompt others to ‘open up’ in a society bound by political correctness.
The producers of his forthcoming films, including Men In Black: International, Marlowe and Made In Italy are yet to comment on his remarks and his continued involvement in the projects.
Neeson appeared on US TV to explain his remarks, made during an interview with French journalist Clémence Michallon, to promote Cold Pursuit, a revenge thriller.
He told Good Morning America that he shocked himself by his desire for revenge following the rape but realised his urges were wrong and had sought help.
‘I had never felt this feeling before, which was a primal urge to lash out,’ he said. ‘After that there were some nights I went out deliberately into black areas in the city, looking to be set upon so that I could unleash physical violence. I did it four, maybe four or five times, until I caught myself and it really shocked me.’
The Ballymena actor, whose films include Schindler’s List, Michael Collins and the Taken trilogy, stressed: ‘I went to a priest, who heard my confession and also later confided in two friends.
‘I’m not racist, this was nearly 40 years ago, but because I was brought up in the north of Ireland, I was brought up in the Troubles in the Sixties, Seventies and early Eighties. The bigotry... I grew up surrounded by that. But I was never part of it.’
Neeson said of the ethnicity of the rapist: ‘If she [the victim, whom he said has since died] had said Irish or Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian, I know it would have had the same effect.’ Later, he appeared on another US chat show, Live With Kelly And Ryan, where he made a point of hugging and shaking hands with various black audience members. But he quickly shut down discussion about the incident, insisting that he wanted to discuss his new film instead.
Asked by Good Morning America host Robin Roberts what he hoped people would learn from his story, Neeson – who has previously come under fire for describing the #MeToo movement as ‘bit of a witch hunt’ – replied: ‘To talk, to open up, to talk about these things. We all pretend we’re all politically correct... sometimes you scratch the surface and discover this racism and bigotry, and it’s there.’
His admission has met a mixed response, with many condemning his actions as racist while others praised him for his honesty. A Sky Data poll of 1,463 people found 44% think Neeson was right to make the admission, while 30% believe he was wrong.
Former Liverpool footballer John Barnes, who suffered racist abuse as a player, said Neeson had been unfairly vilified for ‘telling the truth’ about his feelings at the time and ‘deserved a medal’ for speaking so openly. The Jamaica-born ex-England player, 55, said: ‘[He] was talking about his film – [about] revenge – and he’s talking about how revenge doesn’t do anyone any good. Now what he actually went on to say is he is ashamed and horrified by the way he felt.’
But Detective Sergeant Janet Hills, chairman of the Metropolitan Black Police Association, said: ‘It’s disappointing that he has said what he’s said and elaborated on that. People will take a different view as to whether he is right or wrong.’
Charles Blow, an African-American columnist for the New York Times, asked on Twitter: ‘Could Will Smith confess to stalking the streets of Los Angeles for a whole week searching for random white men to kill and get a pass? Exactly.’
While there’s no question the comments that have left Neeson firmly in the eye of a major racism storm are deeply divisive, there is also no doubt that he has been to hell and back over the past decade,
His wife Natasha Richardson, 45, died following a skiing accident nearly ten years ago, robbing him of the love of his life and leaving him to bring up their two teenage sons.
Last month his nephew Ronan Sexton, 35, died from head injuries sustained in a fall five years earlier. Ms Richardson said Neeson had ‘a real Celtic spiritual-loner thing about him’. His friend, actor Richard Graham, agreed, adding: ‘Liam always liked his own company. There’s part of Liam nobody will ever know.’
Could this isolation, combined with the continuing rawness of his emotion – he is still immersed in grief – be behind his extraordinary, possibly career-ending admission?
At times, Neeson has seemed out of sorts. He swore during a live TV sports broadcast when being interviewed, and more recently criticised the #MeToo campaign.
He has become increasingly isolated now his children have grown up. One son, Micheál, 23, is also an actor. There is talk that Micheál and his father will make a comedy film, Made In Italy, together later this year – although surely everything to do with Neeson is now up in the air. His younger son Daniel is 22 and runs a clothing business in New York, with a sideline in a tequila brand and also a landscape gardening business.
Neeson now mostly lives in upstate New York, in a whitepainted 1810 farmhouse with green shutters, a swimming pool, tennis court and 20 acres.
It is where he married Ms Richardson in 1994. She is buried in the old Millbrook cemetery nearby.
He feels that she is present in the house, recently telling a TV interviewer her clothes still hang in her wardrobe. He visits her grave once or twice a week, aside from when he is away filming. He has planted daffodils and roses by her headstone. He said that he visits: ‘Just to talk, I like it.’
For a time he got into fishing, and noted approvingly that you could pass five hours without saying more than a few words.
One associate says: ‘He is very private, very solitary and I don’t even know who his friends are. He gets a lot of support from her family, but I believe he is alone a lot.’
He started the Taken series just before Ms Richardson died, and it sparked an unlikely ‘action hero’ series of movies.
Neeson has said that he feels he is getting too old for the action man roles, but they are very successful – he is now reckoned to be worth in the region of €70million.
He said of Taken: ‘I really thought it would be kind of a little side road from my so-called career. Really thought it would go straight to video. But it just got great word of mouth. I was stunned.’
In truth, however, Neeson is a restless man who needs to work. He inherited a formidable work ethic from his parents.
His mother Kitty was an assistant cook at a girls’ convent school. His father Barney was a school caretaker of whom he said: ‘He was a quiet fella. We didn’t discuss too many things, but we kind of knew what each other was thinking.’
From them he learned the lesson – you work hard, and you stick at a job.
He was born in Ballymena and has three sisters. After university he worked as a forklift truck driver and did teacher training. He came into acting via theatre in Belfast and Dublin.
There were many women on the way – including Helen Mirren, with
‘A real Celtic spiritual loner’
whom he lived for five years after falling for her on the set of Excalibur.
Other girlfriends included actresses Brooke Shields and Julia Roberts, and the singer Barbra Streisand.
After Ms Richardson’s death, he seems to have thrown himself evermore intensely into work as a form of therapy. He told one interviewer: ‘I’m not good without work. At work, I just don’t wallow too much.’
Since the bereavement he has had just one romance, with PR executive Freya St Johnston whom he knew for ten years before they began dating in late 2010. Their affair was said to have fizzled out in 2013, but they were seen together in 2017 when Neeson filmed a Love Actually Comic Relief special. But it is thought that the romance is now nothing more than a friendship.
In an interview with GQ magazine in 2014, Neeson said: ‘I’m keeping myself to myself and I like it that way. I’m not hunting. I’m the opposite of a – what would a male cougar be?’
In 2016 he caused a sensation by saying that he was dating an ‘incredibly famous’ woman and that his plans for Valentine’s Day would include bringing her a ‘bunch of freshly picked flowers’. Some associates think that he was actually talking about his late wife, rather than a current love interest. A representative said that his comments had been ‘a joke’.
He gave up drinking in 2013 after finding that he was leaning too heavily on booze in the wake of Ms Richardson’s death. One big battle as a single father has been dealing with his boys.
When Micheál was 19, he gave an interview in which he spoke about developing a drug problem at 18 and getting sober thanks to months of ‘wilderness therapy’ in Utah.
Micheál explained that grief over the death of his mother had set him on that path. He said: ‘Looking back, it was a delayed reaction. It was dark. I hit rock bottom.’
In 1994, actress Jodie Foster said presciently: ‘Liam is a big, strong guy, but able to be totally unintellectual and vulnerable. He doesn’t analyse everything he feels, but he feels it, and admits it.’ The wisdom of that may be something he is questioning today.